Give yourself freedom to play

Scroll through LinkedIn and see how many of the same hooks, post structures, and sentence constructions clog up your feed.

Depressing isn’t it. But don’t worry, this won’t be a rant about AI. You’ve seen enough of those. This post is really just to share a few ideas of how you can do something more unique and meaningful with your marketing while everyone else churns out AI slop.

Produce fewer case studies

Is that mad advice from an agency that wants to write them on your behalf? Maybe. But hear me out. For the sake of argument, let’s say you're a mid-sized architecture practice or developer that specialises in university projects.

You might have four or five similar projects you want to get on the website, just in case that dream client looks at your portfolio. That makes sense if you’re looking to show depth of experience, but if each project covers the same talking points, it’s hard to make any of them stand out.

Instead, what if you focused on just one or two of those projects and used the time you saved to create a broader marketing campaign.

You could interview the staff or students who use those buildings for a long form interview. Do a deep dive article with the project architect talking about the broader sector context. Invite a university alumni to talk about the history of the place, or bring in an outside community voice to reflect on the wider impact.

Now you’ve got a whole suite of supporting content to sit alongside the case study, telling a far richer story.

Stand out with print

You could even take it a step further and get creative in its delivery.

What if you worked with a brilliant illustrator to help tell the story? Got your case study printed as a newspaper, or a zine, or a '60s-style print ad? And instead of sending it to everyone on your mailing list, you might just send it to a handful of people you really want to work with, paired with a personal letter.

All the content you created can still be chopped up and used on your website. But in the process, you’ve got something eye-catching and unique. Because who wouldn’t be happy to have that land on their desk on a random Tuesday morning?

Share those bold opinions

Most architecture and design practices are so cautious about their public voice that they end up saying nothing at all. Every post hedged, every interesting opinion softened until it's safe enough to publish. The result is content nobody reads twice (and a whole lot of wasted effort).

You don't need to be provocative for its own sake. But if you've spent years working in a sector, you've no doubt got your own views. About why certain building types keep getting designed the same way. About what actually makes a neighbourhood feel welcoming and alive. About the gap between what clients say they want and what they actually commission. About why so many good projects get watered down before they're built.

Those views are interesting. Share them.

Better still, tie them to the questions clients bring to you. If someone keeps asking you the same thing at the start of every project, write about it. If there's a misunderstanding in your sector that costs clients time and money, clear it up.

A little honesty goes a long way — and if you help your clients think more clearly about their problems, you'll become more attractive than your competitors who just drone on about their services.

Need ideas?

The point isn't the format. It's the freedom to treat your marketing as a creative act — a place to get away from the restraints, rules, and deadlines of fee paying work.

Isn’t that more exciting, to give yourself permission to try novel ideas? It might just be the easiest way to stand out.

Coming up with ideas like these is one of our favourite things to do. We've worked with architects, designers, and developers across all kinds of projects and sectors — helping them stand out with campaigns that put a different spin on the usual tried and tested formulas.

If you want to work through what a campaign or idea could look like for your practice, our 1:1 consultancy is a good place to start.